2015: the Year that Changed Everything?

There has been no lack of disasters taking place in 2015. Some can be classified as “natural” others as human caused. In all cases, anyway, they are an indication of the stress felt by the ecosystem and by the economic system at the same time. We are, finally, reaching our limits as we knew we […]

Doubting The Peak

Dennis Coyne, an editor and frequent contributor to this blog, has suggested that we are not at peak oil. He argues that there is likely to be a dip in production starting next year but higher prices will cause things to turn around and we will surpass the 2015 peak by 2019. He commented a few […]

Gazprom Confirms Commitment to Arctic Region

Gazprom Chairman Alexey Miller underlined his company’s commitment to the Russian Arctic region in his Christmas and New Year address Tuesday. The statement followed news Monday that Gazprom’s board of directors had approved a RUB 842 billion ($11.8 billion) investment program for 2016. Noting Gazprom’s leadership position in the Russian petroleum industry, Miller said: “We […]

A Resolution

On the Eve of 2016, we need a resolution capable of confronting the crisis we face, and making a future worth fighting for. “A Resolution” looks back on the crisis and confusion of 2015: climate change-driven wildfires, droughts, and storms; ISIS and their attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Ankara; bankrupt political leaders at COP21 debating […]

A powerful cyclone has pushed the North Pole 50 degrees above normal to melting point

A powerful cyclone has pushed the North Pole 50 degrees above normal to melting point And this won’t help:  Massive Los Angeles county gas leak is spewing 110,000 pounds of methane an hour Isis Operative Confesses to Receiving Funding from US (January 2015) Police and soldiers allegedly had an orgy during the Brussels terror lockdown America’s […]

What Are The Chances For Peace in 2016?

Each year more than one trillion dollars goes up in smoke. More accurately, it is stolen from the middle and working classes and shipped off to the one percent. I am talking about the massive yearly bill to maintain the US empire. Washington’s warmongers have sold the lie that the military budget has been gutted […]

“American Capitalism” No Longer Serves Society

One hundred years ago European civilization, as it had been known, was ending its life in the Great War, later renamed World War I. Millions of soldiers ordered by mindless generals into the hostile arms of barbed wire and machine gun fire had left the armies stalemated in trenches. A reasonable peace could have been […]

From Oil Glut to Shortage?

With the world awash in crude, the oil industry is contemplating a new problem the oversupply could tee up: an oil shortage. As the oil glut has sent prices to decade lows, plummeting investment by oil-producing countries such as Venezuela and Russia and oil drillers such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC […]

Saudi Arabia won’t stop pumping oil

Saudi Arabia will continue to pump record amounts of oil in the face of decade-low energy prices, the kingdom’s oil minister has said. The world’s largest single producer of crude oil said it would not relent in its policy to flood the world’s oil markets, and had additional capacity to meet further global demand. “We […]

$10 Trillion Investment Needed To Avoid Massive Oil Price Spike

OPEC says that $10 trillion worth of investment will need to flow into oil and gas through 2040 in order to meet the world’s energy needs.  The OPEC published its World Oil Outlook 2015 (WOO) in late December, which struck a much more pessimistic note on the state of oil markets than in the past. On the […]

The stunning scope of the world’s refugee crisis

One out of every 122 people alive today is someone who, at some point, was forced to leave his or her home. If you totaled up all these people, they would have a greater population than all of South Africa — nearly as many people who live in all of the United Kingdom. This is […]

A Sunny Future for Utility-Scale Solar

Utility-scale solar and distributed solar both have an important role to play in reducing greenhouse emissions, and both have made great strides in the past year. Utility-scale solar, the focus of this article, is reaching “grid parity” (i.e., cost equivalency) with traditional generation in more areas across the country.  And solar received a major boost […]

Want To Bring The Oil Market Into Focus? Adjust Prices For Inflation

Summary The world oil market is estimated to be oversupplied by 1.5M BBL/d, yet Saudi Arabia and OPEC continue to maintain higher rates of production. Prices of oil have plummeted since mid-2014 from highs above $100 per barrel to recent lows below $35 per barrel in December 2015. This article reviews the oil supply and […]

China Sees Energy Consumption Rising In 2016

China expects its energy consumption to grow in 2016, the official Xinhua news agency of the world’s largest energy consumer said on Tuesday. China’s apparent demand for crude oil will reach 550 million tonnes (11 million barrels per day) and apparent demand for natural gas will hit 205 billion cubic metres, Nur Bekri, head of […]

10 Big Stories News Media Ignored in 2015

When Sonoma State University professor Carl Jensen started looking into the new media’s practice of self-censorship in 1976, the Internet was only a dream and most computers were still big mainframes with whirling tape reels and vacuum tubes. He put out an annual list of the 10 biggest stories that the mainstream media ignored, arguing […]

Saudi Arabia’s vice minister of petroleum and mineral resources on the state of the global oil industry

“Around $200 billion of investments in energy have been canceled this year, with energy companies planning to cut another 3 to 8 percent from their investments next year. This is the first time since the mid-1980s that the oil and gas industry will have cut investment in two consecutive years.” Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman al […]

Saudis Plan Unprecedented Subsidy Cuts to Counter Oil Plunge

Confronting a drop in oil prices and mounting regional turmoil, Saudi Arabia reduced energy subsidies and allocated the biggest part of government spending in next year’s budget to defense and security. Authorities announced increases to the prices of fuel, electricity and water as part of a plan to restructure subsidies within five years. The government […]

Getting food on the table without ruining the planet

As I slumbered gently on the sofa yesterday, slow-burning the oh-so-many calories that somehow found their way to my overstretched tummy, I realised there could be no better time to think about food. As a westerner, this weekend was the biggest blowout of the year – though for most Hong Kong Chinese, the greatest calorie […]

Let’s Define Degrowth before we Dismiss it

Diverse leftist commentators such as Samuel Farber, Paul Krugman, and Leigh Phillips are arguing that economic growth is necessary to protect existing and future well-being. But rarely do they define what they mean by economic growth. Recently there’s been a wave of arguments defending economic growth from a leftist perspective. People are increasingly reacting to […]

Iran moving away from ‘oil curse’

Iran is drifting away from an oil-centered economy greatly prone to spasmodic market volatility and turmoil, which has unfailingly stunted the country’s every bid for sustainable development. At their peak, oil revenues have caused an outbreak of virulent economic maladies, including stagflation and the Dutch disease – a situation when a sudden flush of petrodollars […]

Kunstler: Questions and Answers

The really big item in last night’s 60-Minutes newsbreak was that the latest Star Wars movie passed the billion dollar profit gate a week after release. That says just about everything you need to know about our floundering society, including the state of the legacy news media. The cherry on top last week was Elon […]

The Next Recession Will Be A Barn-Burner

For those who enjoyed his encyclopedic 2015: Year In Review, this week we spend an hour with David Collum to ask: After processing through all of that information, what do you think the future is most likely to bring? Perhaps it comes as little surprise that he sees the global economy headed back down into recession, one […]

Islamic State ‘gets tougher’ in face of air strikes

A new message purporting to come from the leader of Islamic State said air strikes by Russia and a U.S.-led coalition had failed to weaken the group. “Be confident that God will grant victory to those who worship him, and hear the good news that our state is doing well. The more intense the war […]

China officially ends one child policy

China today officially junked its controversial one child policy, allowing couples to have a second child amid deepening demographic crisis of shrinking workforce and ageing population in the world’s second largest economy. Chinese lawmakers passed a historic decision allowing all couples to have two children from January 1, ending its over three and half decades […]

The Case for $20 Oil

Oil prices have dropped to $35 a barrel, down from over $110 in 2011. The trend line does not mean much; it is just a chart. But that does not mean the causes of the trend are not obvious, and likely are also not over. The argument for lower oil prices breaks into a very […]

Russia strikes ISIS oil tankers

Russia has released dramatic images of what officials claim to be a successful strikes targeting ISIS’s oil-smuggling tankers in northern Syria, without being more specific on their location. “We’ve attacked many terrorist bases, hits were identified on targets and much damage was caused to the terrorist infrastructure,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement […]

Five energy surprises for 2016: The possible and the improbable

Many energy analysts like to make predictions at the end of the year for the coming year. Instead, I’ll point to five possible surprises in energy–surprises because few people expect them to happen. I am not predicting that any of the following will happen, only that there is an outside chance that one or more […]

The Crude Oil Export Ban–What, Me Worry About Peak Oil?

Congress ended the U.S. crude oil export ban last week. There is apparently no longer a strategic reason to conserve oil because shale production has made American great again. At least, that’s narrative that reality-averse politicians and their bases prefer. The 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) that banned crude oil export was the closest thing to an […]

Russia sends missiles to the Arctic as Vladimir Putin moves for oil and gas

The new Cold War? Russia sends troops and missiles to the Arctic as Putin stakes a claim for the region’s oil and gas reserves Russia, Norway, Denmark and Canada are fighting over the Arctic territory Putin is building six bases in the Arctic, and sending troops and missiles It’s estimated that billions of tonnes of […]

Hoping for a Price Surge, Oil Companies Keep Wells in Reserve

The price of oil keeps dropping. But that didn’t stop a work crew from drilling a well recently on what was once a cornfield, carefully guiding the last sections of 13,000 feet of pipe spiraling into the hard Niobrara shale with a diamond-tipped bit. Their well, one of hundreds drilled by Anadarko Petroleum in eastern […]

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LATEST NEWS HEADLINES

• Is It Time To Abandon the Idea of Phasing Out Oil and Gas?
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• Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser says energy transition strategy ‘visibly failing’
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• US seeks to buy up to 3 million bbls of oil for Strategic Petroleum Reserve
• Desertification: the world is losing healthy land at an astonishing rate
• US oil production will keep booming in 2024, setting up a possible showdown with Saudi Arabia
• Saudi Arabia piles pressure on UAE to shift COP28 focus away from oil and gas
• US Warship, Commercial Ships Under Attack In Red Sea